Project melds NASA, Diné culture

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — A federally funded collaboration between NASA and the Navajo Nation is striving to combine each group's knowledge and understanding of the universe and turn the results into a community education program for families across the reservation.

Together with ArtReach International, a multimedia company out of Herndon, Va., they're developing a video, music CD and variety of youth activities they hope to introduce to Navajo Nation communities by spring's end.

"We're seeking to present NASA science and Navajo ... cultural teachings in a dual learning environment," said ArtReach CEO Alice Carron, that is, she added, in equal measure, side by side.

One of their goals, said Daniella Scalice, is to find some connections between Navajo knowledge of astronomy and NASA's knowledge of astrobiology.

Scalice, who works for NASA's Astrobiology Institute, carefully described just what astrobiology means as "the study of the origin, evolution and distribution of life in the universe."

Angela Barney Nez, a staff assistant for the Navajo Nation Office of the Speaker, is helping oversee the tribe's involvement in the project. On the Navajo side of the equation, she said, some of the material touches upon their cultural teachings of the stars and constellations, whose movements inform everything from the rhythm of the day to the planting and harvesting of crops.

"A Navajo man like my father would follow that, and he would know when to wake everyone up, or when to start a prayer ceremony," she said.

The two bodies of knowledge may have more in common than some people think.

In many ways, she said, the science that NASA is bringing to the table "parallels our Navajo knowledge, and it gives validity, in a way, that there's truth to what we've been saying all along."

The partnership, said Carron, grew out of a focus group her company conducted with Navajo tribal and education officials in Window Rock a year ago. That, she said, is when ArtReach, which had already worked with the tribe on other projects, asked if they were interested in partnering with NASA. They signed up, but wanted to make sure that whatever they did was relevant for Navajos and engaged the whole family.

Most of the bilingual materials for the program are nearly finished. The video, said Carron, was close to taking its final form.

According to Nez, it starts out with some of the Navajos' cultural teachings designed to catch the audience's attention follows up with some science, then continues to move back and forth for the rest of the film.

Nez believes that showing those connections will help keep the Navajo culture alive. In turn, she said, that culture will help the youth maintain a distinctive sense of Navajo identity.

Nez talks of "reclaiming" that culture from its gradual dilution amidst the trappings of Western civilization an hopes this program will help the tribe take a small step in that direction.

Among the things some are forgetting, she said, is the Navajo belief in "natural law," the things in life, on the earth, and beyond it like the start that lie outside the realm of human influence, the things we cannot control. Lose that knowledge, she said, and you risk making the wrong decisions in life.

Earlier this week, Carron, Scalice and other ArtReach and NASA representatives met with more than 40 Navajo-area educators who'll be charged with taking those materials into their communities for a two-day training session in Window Rock. Together, they reviewed the materials, evaluated them, and practiced presenting them at mock "community nights."

Scalice said they were not yet sure exactly how they'll roll out the program across the reservation.

They'll start with a few field tests at first in three or four communities at most to work out any glitches, make the program as user friendly as possible, and evaluate their success. How many and precisely which communities they'll expand the program to after that, Scalice said, had yet to be worked out.

It's all happening thanks to a one-time grant from NASA Headquarters' Office of Education. After they get the program up and running, it will be up to the volunteers they've trained and the Navajo Nation to keep it going.